The big story in high-energy physics this week is the release of a report on the projected cost of the International (very nearly) Linear Collider (ILC), which comes out to $6.7 billion-with-a-b (not including labor). There’s a story in the Times this morning, and an expert view on Cosmic Variance, and… well, if you read physics blogs, you’ve seen it mentioned. They’d revoke my blogging license if I failed to say anything about it.

Maybe I’m just cranky at the end of a long week, but I have a hard time getting all that excited about this. For one thing, it’s not my area of physics. More importantly, though, it’s still a hugely speculative endeavor, contingent on a lot of other factors.

The short explanation is that the ILC is proposed as a follow-up machine for the Large Hadron Collider, the new machine at CERN that is projected to start up late this year and has everybody in particle physics all a-twitter. The ILC won’t reach the same maximum energies as the LHC, but it will provide a little more control over the collision energy, and is thus envisioned as a way to “zoom in” and really nail down the properties of new particles discovered at the LHC.

Which is the “contingent” part. It’s only interesting to build the machine if something new gets found at the LHC in the energy range of interest, which we won’t know for at least a couple of years. It’s a pretty solid expectation, but by no means certain. If the LHC doesn’t find anything, the ILC won’t, either, so the most optimistic projections don’t have construction starting before 2010 or so. And that assumes that something interesting is found, and they manage to get the various governments involved to pay for the thing.

Don’t get me wrong– I’m not saying that the planning effort is a waste of time– if the device is going to be built in the lifetime of anybody working in high-energy physics now, the planning needs to be done in parallel with the LHC development. I’m just saying that I’m not particularly excited about the announcement that a machine that may get built if the LHC finds something and the funding can be secured will cost shitloads of money. I understand that it’s been a slow news decade for particle physics, but this just doesn’t fill me with glee.

I’m all for pre-need planning commissions when we’re talking on a scale like the ILC. If only they could learn to be flexible… people are so resistant to change after they’ve spent x years planning something, even when it’s in their own benefit. Good luck to them :P

Books

You've read the blog, now try the books:

Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist will be published in December 2014 by Basic Books. "This fun, diverse, and accessible look at how science works will convert even the biggest science phobe." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In writing that is welcoming but not overly bouncy, persuasive in a careful way but also enticing, Orzel reveals the “process of looking at the world, figuring out how things work, testing that knowledge, and sharing it with others.”...With an easy hand, Orzel ties together card games with communicating in the laboratory; playing sports and learning how to test and refine; the details of some hard science—Rutherford’s gold foil, Cavendish’s lamps and magnets—and entertaining stories that disclose the process that leads from observation to colorful narrative." --Kirkus ReviewsGoogle+

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is published by Basic Books. "“Unlike quantum physics, which remains bizarre even to experts, much of relativity makes sense. Thus, Einstein’s special relativity merely states that the laws of physics and the speed of light are identical for all observers in smooth motion. This sounds trivial but leads to weird if delightfully comprehensible phenomena, provided someone like Orzel delivers a clear explanation of why.” --Kirkus Reviews "Bravo to both man and dog." The New York Times.

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is published by Scribner. "It's hard to imagine a better way for the mathematically and scientifically challenged, in particular, to grasp basic quantum physics." -- Booklist "Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is an absolutely delightful book on many axes: first, its subject matter, quantum physics, is arguably the most mind-bending scientific subject we have; second, the device of the book -- a quantum physicist, Orzel, explains quantum physics to Emmy, his cheeky German shepherd -- is a hoot, and has the singular advantage of making the mind-bending a little less traumatic when the going gets tough (quantum physics has a certain irreducible complexity that precludes an easy understanding of its implications); finally, third, it is extremely well-written, combining a scientist's rigor and accuracy with a natural raconteur's storytelling skill." -- BoingBoing